A farmer has criticised the government for its compensation due to his livestock being infected with bovine TB.
Michael Brown, a cattle breeder from Hertfordshire, said he was offered £1,850 for his prize-winning cow, even though he claims it is worth up to £15,000.
The charbron formal is one of two of his herd to be culled after testing positive for the disease.
Defra said it has a "clear and well-established" system in place for determining compensation. The system takes into account an animal's pedigree status, type, age and sex.
But Mr Brown told the BBC that it does not take into consideration the higher prices some cattle can reach.
'Tragic'
"It's tragic. Tragic to think they are going to go off at that stupid price when they're worth an awful lot more than money," he said.
"How can they average everything with different breeds and quality when we are talking about probably the best cattle in the country - I hope anyway...
"We can see prices for these cattle well into the £20,000's and bulls up to £100,000. It's going to have a very serious impact."
Mr Brown, who breeds pedigree Charolais cattle in Leominster, has bulls that are free of TB but he cannot move or sell them due to restrictions in place because of the testing.
How is it calculated?
The Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) uses market prices to calculate compensation for cattle culled to control the spread of TB.
Every month Defra publishes a table of compensation values (average market price for same category cattle) for 51 different categories of cattle.
The categories are based on an animal’s age and sex, pedigree status and type (eg beef or dairy)
The Government's website states: "Sales data for around 1.5 million cattle are collected each year to make sure the table values adequately reflect market prices. For non-pedigree animals 1 month of price data is used to calculate compensation. For pedigree animals 6 months of price data is used.
"Almost all cases of TB compensation is determined using table valuations. If there isn’t enough sales data for a particular category of cattle in any month, compensation will be determined by using: the most recently available table value for that category, or a valuation provided by a valuer appointed by the government."
